ROME--  Two men were stabbed inside the church of Santa Maria in Trastevere at a free lunch for the area’s poor and homeless on Sunday.

 The confrontation is said to have begun when a homeless Moroccan who, according to some reports, had already eaten, was told there was no more room in the church. A volunteer asked him to return later, and the man duly went away only to return shortly wielding a knife. Two people - a homeless 21 year-old Romanian and a 41 year-old volunteer from Sardinia - were wounded while attempting to subdue him.                

 Police officers patrolling the square outside noticed the commotion and were quick to intervene. The culprit, who also suffers from an unspecified mental illness, was arrested and taken into custody on charges of attempted murder.

 The two victims were transported to hospital, where the volunteer was treated for minor lacerations. The Romanian sustained a more serious injury to the lung and remains hospitalised. Neither of the two men is thought to be in critical condition.

 The free lunch program has been a weekly fixture at the church for 20 years, but has recently been struggling to cope with a huge influx of new attendees. The spokesman for the parish of Sant’Edigio, Mario Marazziti, explained that the church once used to serve 20 to 25 people every Sunday but recently that number has ballooned as high as 120.

 “Immigrants are still the majority,” Marazziti told Roman daily Il Messagero, “but there are also a lot of Italians. There’s a growing discontent in the city and it’s these communal spaces which prevent that from becoming desperation… As a community, Sant’Edigio has helped about 150,000 people and there have only ever been a couple of violent incidents.”